Exactly one month ago, one of
Tony Abbott
’s newly minted junior ministers rose to address the National Press Club.

Senator
Mitch Fifield
is the assistant minister for social services, which makes him the minister responsible for the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

It was a measured, careful, even passionate speech which would have given the disabilities community heart.

The NDIS was, after all, an initiative that emerged during Labor’s time in office.

It involves lots of money. The Coalition had to be rather dragged kicking and screaming to support it.

The scheme has the misfortune of often getting bundled in with some more unfortunate bits of public policy which might leave the average voter thinking it was hastily dreamt up, badly designed and, as a result, in all likelihood a waste of taxpayers’ money.

In fact, the NDIS has the rare distinction of emerging from very detailed work by the Productivity Commission.

While 460,000 people a year are expected to eventually receive direct funding from the scheme, it is expected to affect millions of people, including carers, volunteers and workers in the health and services sectors, and pay economic dividends estimated by the Productivity Commission at an annual gain of $3800 for each recipient.

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Under the scheme, disabled people receive a funding entitlement based on need, rather than getting lost in a miasma of one-off grants for aids and assistance.

Just four sites operating

It is a massive reform. The plan was to launch a number of sites around the country to test how to roll it out. Just four sites have been up and running since July.

Now there has been a change of government and the NDIS unfortunately ends the year with a huge cloud over its head as a result of slippery political manoeuvring, conflicting public statements, and, one suspects, more than a dash of ideological zealotry.

But let’s go back to Mitch Fifield at the Press Club.

“Although our last federal Parliament was rather inelegant," he began, “there was one unequivocally good thing to come out of it – a cross-party commitment to deliver the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

“The NDIS will, in full rollout, have a gross cost of $22 billion per annum and require, in complete form, an additional contribution from the federal government of more than $8 billion each year from 2019-20.

“Some hundreds of Australians with disability living in NDIS launch sites have started to receive the better deal they deserve. But in AFL parlance, we’re still very much pre-season. We’re in launch phase. We all still have a long, long way to go to get to 460,000 NDIS participants. As minister, this is a responsibility that I could not take more seriously."

Fifield said it was true “my party sees itself as the party of smaller government, but we are not the party of no government".

“And the design at the heart of the NDIS – the individual at the centre and in control being able to choose the supports of their choice – could not rest more easily with the philosophy of my party."

‘The NDIS is core government business’

He noted the Commission of Audit has as one of its principles that “government should do for people what they cannot do, or cannot do efficiently, for themselves, but no more".

“The more that government does for people those things that they can do for themselves, the less capacity government has to do for people the things that they can’t do for themselves," he said.

“For me and for this government and for our prime minister, the NDIS is core government business. It is a priority."

It was unequivocal rhetoric. However, Fifield’s speech was also the first place we saw the numbers emerge about the NDIS in practice.

Fifield reported that the number of people registering an interest (our italics) in the scheme in the first three months at the trial sites was almost 50 per cent more than expected. Oh, and “plan costs are exceeding modelled average costs by around 30 per cent".

“What this means in dollar terms is that instead of coming out at the expected average package cost of $34,969, as based on the work of the Productivity Commission, they are currently costing $46,290 for the first quarter," Fifield said.

It is not clear whether it was these figures which allowed open season to be declared on the NDIS or whether that process may have already been under way.

But, whatever Fifield said last month, and despite his protests this week that Labor has been unnecessarily scaring the disabled community, the public statements of the Prime Minister and Treasurer in the past week have all been about the need to rein in NDIS costs.

“At the moment, contrary to what the previous government claimed, the pilot program has blown out massively,"
Joe Hockey
said this week. “We want to deliver the scheme in full, but we want to do it in an affordable manner, otherwise it won’t be sustainable."

States’ position unclear

So here is a little context. This data for the average package cost in the first three months of the NDIS at four sites relates to 921 people. The people at the sites are not an average cohort of expected NDIS users, but some of those with the highest needs. There have also been some teething errors, such as bringing wheelchair costs to book upfront instead of on an amortised basis.

But it was the tiniest chink that was needed to start casting doubts on the scheme.

Behind the scenes, there is talk that the states are being rumbled to agree to put a cap on the cost of individual packages (which completely destroys the insurance principle underlying it). Some states are also nervous about the potential cost. It is not clear the states will emerge to be as powerful defenders of the NDIS as they were of the Gonski education deals.

But you would hope so. You would hope a government policy which is so important to so many people doesn’t just get lumped in with other victims of cynical post-election dumping of pledges.

You would hope it doesn’t become a victim of ideological wars or political opportunism across the political divide, but is allowed to find its feet and iron out its inevitable teething problems in some quiet corner. It is probably all too much to hope for, after the year that has been.

But it will be the Christmas wish of 460,000 Australians and their carers.